Wilhelm Marr’s A Mirror to the Jews

Source Description

On June 22, 1862, Wilhelm Marr published the
first edition of his work, “Der Judenspiegel” [“A Mirror
to the Jews”](editions 1-4, 56 pp), with the second through fourth editions
appearing within a few weeks. The fifth edition, which will be quoted from here
unless otherwise noted, was published in the same year, however with a
“different Foreword” and now comprising 58 pages. In this version the two-page
Afterword of the earlier editions, as well as the two-page “Addendum,” were
dropped. In them Marr
explains why he at first hesitated to publish the work and what then prompted
him to do so. The book was self-published (printed by Pontt
und Döhren). Marr identified his motive for altering the Introduction to the
fifth edition as his response to “the guttersnipe ways in which the majority of
Hamburg’s
leading Jews reacted against my person rather than my writing,”Wilhelm Marr, Der
Judenspiegel, Hamburg, 51862, p.
3. thus compelling him to remove the earlier introduction’s
“conciliatory conclusion”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg, 51862; self-published, Printer: Pontt und
Döhr, p. 3. and, instead, mounting a counter-critique
against the false judgments of his work.

In 1862
Marr had, at first
intended to support Reform Judaism in its controversy with Jewish Orthodoxy with
a pro-emancipation piece.
The harsh criticism of his June 13, 1862 letter
to the “Courier on the Weser” prompted him to hastily rework a manuscript that
had been put aside, resulting in the many inconsistencies that Marr himself later described
as “immature.” Now he attacked not only the Orthodox but also the Reform Jews as
reactionary. The title page carried an epigraph from Heinrich Heine’s topical
poem of 1843, “Das neue Israelitische Hospital in
Hamburg”
(The new Jewish hospital in Hamburg) in which the talk is of Judaism as “a thousand
year-old malady” but which also gives expression, in the form of a question, to
the hope that “perhaps one day the grandchild [will] recover and be reasonable
and happy,”Heinrich Heine, Sämtliche Werke (Düsseldorfer Ausgabe) Bd. 2 Neue
Gedichte, bearb. von Elisabeth Genton, Hamburg 1983, pp.
171f.—striking the theme of [Marr’s] book.

Choosing as his title “Judenspiegel,” [“Mirror to the
Jews”] Wilhelm Marr
was literally saying that a mirror ought to be held up to the Jews. He thus
placed himself in the tradition of anti-Jewish works, such as Johannes Pfefferkorn’sJudenspiegel of 1507,
part of his dispute with Johann
Reuchlin, and Hartwig von Hundt-Radowsky’s incendiary pamphlet of 1819, “A Mirror to the Jews: A Picture of Infamy from
Ancient and Modern Times” [Judenspiegel. Ein Schand- und
Sittengemälde aus alter und neuer Zeit].Marr’s earlier works had
radically critiqued reactionary German conditions while advocating general
social emancipation. The
causes of his turn against Orthodox as well as acculturated Reform Jews emerged
directly from his advocacy of radical democratization and his critique of
religion, which, in his view, must lead to the complete dissolution of religious
or national minorities. In Hamburg where Marr belonged to the radical-democratic camp, Jewish emancipation and the
“Jewish Question” became points of controversy in the political rivalry between
“liberals” and “radicals” after 1848. Gabriel Riesser, the liberal
champion of Jewish emancipation, and the “radical” Marr were involved in this
controversy, with Marr
fully supporting the aims of the Reform Jews. The dispute culminated in a
disagreement concerning the introduction of civil marriage, with Riesser, in the name of
freedom of conscience and religion, as well as the protection of minorities,
protesting obligatory civil marriage. Marr took this as proof that
even liberal Jews cared only about Jewish welfare and exclusiveness. In this
dissension over the goals and scope of the emancipation process lay the core conflict: for
Marr, the freedom
of the individual came before all else and, accordingly, ought to dissolve all
group loyalties. Ultimately, the emancipation of the Jews signified their
“self-emancipation
from Judaism”.Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 51862, p. 42.. Marr accused Riesser and the Reform Jews
of betrayal because they had forsaken radical political reforms to become
reactionaries. His “Judenspiegel” was to serve
the purpose of holding a mirror up to the Jews so they could see their
disloyalty.

Marr‘s
demands

In contrast to the later antisemitic political movement Marr in no way demanded that
emancipation be
rescinded. On the contrary, emancipation did not go far enough. He urged that further steps be
taken toward the total assimilation of the Jews, for example, the introduction
of civil marriage (assimilation “of the flesh” through “mixed marriages”), the state-takeover of
the Jewish welfare system, reform of the right of inheritance, and dissolution
of the Jewish religious community
structure. Marr’s
model for this program was the United States where the
Jews shed their idiosyncrasies because the state recognized them as “citizens”
but not as Jews. His own program would therefore be “short and clear: One Nation, one State”Wilhelm Marr, Der
Judenspiegel, Hamburg 51862,
p.56. (Addendum, p. 56, emphasis in the original). Marr criticized the, in his
view, half-hearted emancipation policies of the German states, calling them
“hypocritical lies” because they recognized “Jewry without reciprocity.” He
thought it an error that the state had enabled, through the granting of
universal suffrage, that Jews could enter state service, without having
“demanded guarantees from them,”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, p. 44. that is, without
their actual emancipation
from Judaism. As long as that process remained incomplete, it was Marr’s opinion, the Jews
could not make any such guarantees, “because they placed the Jewish state higher
than all others.”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, p. 44. He tied to this claim the widely
held view that Judaism functioned as a form of theocracy, “in which religious
faith is identical with a Jewish state constitution and system of law
enforcement.”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, p. 49. The full emancipation of Jews therefore presupposed
their emancipation from
Judaism. This, in his view, could be accomplished only through the privatization
of the Jewish religion by means of the dissolution of the religious community’s
organizational structure. Marr saw the ultimate goal of Jewish emancipation as “the
integration and disappearance of the Jews into the
form and character of the state majority”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel,
Hamburg 51862, p. 49., the state
certainly would have to be ideologically neutral. Upon their total assimilation,
Jews qua Jews would finally vanish.

In the Introduction to editions 1 through 4 of “Der
Judenspiegel” Marr declares that: “preaching Jew-hatred could not be further
from our purpose.” Rather, he wanted to help “the Jews reach their full human
potential,” something that could “happen in no other way—it has to be
said—except through the downfall of Judaism, a phenomenon that negates
everything purely human and noble”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, p. 5.. Unlike
Christianity which rests upon a cultural-historical idea, Judaism, for Marr, is nothing more than a
“morbid phenomenon without any inner connection to the cultural history of
mankind”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, p. 4.. In this Introduction he praises a
number of honorable Hamburg Jewish men who let the Jewish community see the
consequences of “rightly understood emancipation,” in that “they seek the formal
self-abandonment of Judaism’s exceptional position in the state.” In his eyes,
these men thereby ceased ”being Jews”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, p. 3.. To this still
weak initiative he attributed a “deeply moral significance”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel,
Hamburg 1-41862, p. 4. because
it forwarded a necessary historical process. But possibly because these Jewish
men were not fully aware of the scope of their demands, they may have protested
against “Der Judenspiegel”. He himself asserted
in the Afterword (editions 1-4) that his standpoint was “too liberating to be
suspected of religious hatred.”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, p. 54.

Marr’s critique of
Judaism

Marr’s attack in
“Der Judenspiegel” targeted “Jewish
particularism,” the “evil abscess of exclusivity”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel,
Hamburg 51862, p. 35., the
historical justification for which he contested, since he saw the Jews, as a
“mixed race,”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 51862, p. 46. having been neither a “racially pure
primal people” nor a “consolidated nation.”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 51862, p. 4. To substantiate
these assertions, he dedicated the greatest part of his bookWilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel,
Hamburg 51862, pp. 12-36. to a
“brief historical sketch,” depending for the most part on the Old Testament to
describe in “lurid colors” the political, national, moral, and religious
character of Jewry since the patriarchs. He imputed to them treason, war,
robbery, and carnage as their main occupations, as well as the aversion to work
and lust after money. He went about demonstrating that the Jews were from the
beginning a wandering, treacherous, thieving, servile people and a nation that
had never known peace, calm, culture, and civilization. Up until the present
day, there clung to them objectionable, outlandish characteristics which
Marr held
responsible for the antipathy toward JewsWilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 51862, pp. 36f.. On the basis of
this historical continuity, Marr posed and then answered his own question: “have the Jews in
their totality reached the stage of maturity that would warrant their emancipation and
particularly their political equality of status?” His
answer was a clear “No”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel,
Hamburg 51862, p. 36.. He
justified this answer with the claim that Judaism was designed to be too
“specifically national and Jewish” and that therefore the Jews formed “an alien
element in the state.”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 51862, p. 4.Marr further demanded
that Judaism not only be dissolved as a “religious-denominational sect,” but
that it also be subject to criticism “as a race, a civil and social entity”Wilhelm Marr, Der
Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, p.
4.. “Judaism must cease to exist, if
humanity is to commence”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 51862, p. 54.. He directs the
same demand to the Christian state; it, too, must emancipate itself and become
ideologically neutralWilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 51862, pp. 55f.. In the
Introduction to the first four editions of “Der
Judenspiegel,” Marr refers to the fact that Christianity has already been
subjected to the kind of criticism that now ought to be applied to JudaismWilhelm Marr, Der
Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-4 1862, p.
5.. He declares as well “the openly confessed tendency of this
book” to be the struggle against “religious, social, and political Judaism”Wilhelm Marr, Der
Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, S.
6. , which for him, however, did not signify a struggle
against Jews: “the Jews, after all, were simply a sad but necessary consequence,
a product, of Judaism”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, p. 5..

At the conclusion of his book, Marr concedes all civil rights to the Jews, however would
exclude them from all state offices. To be allowed to hold these offices, he
demands of the Jews, as well as all other nationalities, “that they completely
germanize themselves.”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, p. 52. A Jew who gives
himself over to this without reservation “is our friend.” He who as a Jew is not
ready to do this is “not eligible for equality of status [in state
service]”Wilhelm Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 51862, p. 58.. The Afterword of editions 1 through 4
closes with the demand: “The Jews must adapt to us, we do not have to adapt to
them”Wilhelm
Marr, Der Judenspiegel, Hamburg 1-41862, p.
54..

Reactions and consequences

His uncompromising radicalism, his June 13, 1862
letter in the “Courier on the Weser,” ten days before publication
of “Der Judenspiegel,” which brought harsh
criticism down on him, and finally the publication of “Der Judenspiegel” itself, with its many demeaning and hateful
observations about Jews—all these had drastic consequences for Marr. He was satirized in a
poem and publicly caricatured as a “Jew-Eater” by Julius
Stettenheim. His democratic party colleagues distanced themselves
from him. He lost his seat in a new election for the Hamburg city
council, forcing him out of politics and limiting his activity to
journalism and political commentary. Moreover, the appearance of “Der Judenspiegel” evoked no great resonance and was
not taken all that seriously, but rather as some sort of “farce”. Despite its
anti-Jewish accusations, it was ultimately just an offshoot of the democratic
Young Hegelian stance on Jewish emancipation with its assertively radical demands for assimilation.
Seventeen years later Marr repeated his negative descriptions of Jews from “Der Judenspiegel ” in his “Victory of Jewry over
Germandom,” one of the foundational texts of modern antisemitism. However, now the objective of a
possible Jewish emancipation was abandoned. For him and for other antisemites the full
legal equality of Jews had, in the intervening years, facilitated a Jewish
domination over the Germans that in 1879
Marr already
represented as a fact that could no longer be undone.

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About the Author

Werner Bergmann (Thematic Focus: Antisemitism and Persecution), Prof., is Professor at the Centre for Research on Antisemitism, Technical University of Berlin. His research interests centre on the sociology and history of Antisemitism and related fields, such as racism and right-wing extremism.

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International License. As long as the work is unedited and you give appropriate credit according to the Recommended Citation, you may reuse and redistribute the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes.